EAST LANSING — Squinting into the Pasadena sun, Mark Dantonio spoke softly to his players, through the lens of a cellphone camera.

"Hey guys, welcome to the Rose Bowl," Michigan State's coach began.

This was last May, long before anyone knew anything about this football season.

Dantonio went there "just for a while. No occasion," he said Sunday night. Other than being nearby at an alumni event.

"Just to walk on the field a little bit," he continued in his video message to his players, which he finally shared with them via Twitter on Friday night, the eve of MSU's Big Ten championship game win over Ohio State. "This is where we make it happen. …You will be the ones. It sort of gives you the chills walking out here, it's a long way from home. But we've got a plan. We've got a plan to get here."

MSU's season certainly didn't begin on script. It'll end, however, exactly as Dantonio hoped nearly seven months ago, when he made his first pilgrimage to the Rose Bowl since his only other visit, as a graduate assistant for Ohio State's 1984 Rose Bowl team.

The Big Ten champion Spartans (12-1) play Pac-12 champ Stanford (11-2) on New Year's Day on Dantonio's late spring stomping ground.

Yet even as MSU stumbled through August and September, searching for an offense and a quarterback, the plan Dantonio laid out on camera had long since been enacted. Years ago.

Dantonio is successful because of how he determines success. Not ignoring wins and losses, but understanding they're a result of people. He is first in the people business. Then the football business.

If he felt otherwise, he wouldn't have built a winner at MSU. Something no one else has done like this in the modern era.

MSU's seventh-year coach basked in his moment Sunday night, his voice gravelly from countless conversations since Saturday night's win and a short night of sleep that didn't begin until about 4:30 a.m. Sunday, when his head finally hit the pillow in Indianapolis.

Dantonio, contrary to his facial expressions, loves people. How'd he celebrate a program-validating, perception-altering win over the Buckeyes?

"I just sort of hung out in the (hotel) lobby, actually," Dantonio said. "I wanted to be around the players and their families."

I asked Dantonio a football question Sunday night, during his post-bowl-announcement news conference — which had to wait for the rest of the BCS bowl lineup to be revealed — wondering about when he knew his blueprint as a head coach would work and the gratification that comes with knowing it has.

Dantonio responded by first talking about his players off the field, their grades and chemistry, and his players of years past.

"That's really how I determine what is success and what is not — how people feel when they leave here," Dantonio said.

"Obviously, everybody's not going to feel the same, but that's how I've determined success.

"If it's all about winning, it's going to, I think, take you over the edge at some point. So I've tried to really formulate our success on the basis of those things. Winning becomes as a product of that. … People see the product. They don't understand and don't see the process."

No, but they should appreciate it. And know it's there. This wasn't done by quick-fix, as a way to move to the next job. MSU didn't need short-term glory. Because every time this football program falls back, it eats at its soul, and the confidence of its fragile fan base.

Dantonio's players certainly appreciate his process. Sunday night, senior linebacker Max Bullough, who's dreamt and talked more about the importance of this Big Ten championship moment than any of his teammates, put Dantonio in perspective. I'll leave you with Bullough's telling quote.

"For me, as much as anything, he's been an example," Bullough said. "Someone I can look at and just really watch, see what he does, see how he acts.

"Just to be involved in that family, from the perspective I have, is just a great example of how to do things, how to do things the right way. You look back at all the crap we went through, the incidents, the fights, the wins, the losses — Coach D is a guy who will stand up here and he'll shoot you straight, tell you what the right thing is to do and do that, because it's the right thing to do, not because you guys like it, not because ESPN likes it, not because Mark Hollis likes, do it because it's the right thing to do.

"That's something I'll take from this university and it might be the best thing I get from here. (Even though) we're going to the Rose Bowl, that might be the biggest thing I take from this place."

Rose Bowl -- Michigan St. (12-1, 8-0): Big Ten champions. The Spartans have a turnover margin of +14, one of the best in the country, and held opponents to 12.7 points per game. (Photo: Brian Spurlock, USA TODAY Sports)

BCS title game -- Auburn (12-1, 7-1): SEC champions. The Tigers are the top rushing team in the country (335.7 ypg) and are coming off big wins against Alabama and Missouri. (Photo: John David Mercer, USA TODAY Sports)